The Sorceress of Rome

With a yell as if he had seen a wild beast crouching for its deadly spring, John of the Catacombs sprang up, only to be instantly struck down by a mighty blow from the commander's gauntleted hand. He lay senseless on the ground, covered with blood. The bow had fallen from his grasp. Setting his foot on the outlaw's breast, Eckhardt hesitated for a moment whether to rid Rome of so monstrous a villain, or spare him, in order to learn the real instigators of the crime, when a piercing shriek from above convinced him that while the bravo had failed, the high-born ruffian had been more successful.

There was no time for parley.

Trampling with his crushing weight over the bravo's breast Eckhardt turned towards the spot whence the cry of distress had come. An intense hush fraught with doubts and fears had fallen upon the monk's audience at the ominous outcry, – a cry which might have been but the signal for some preconcerted outrage, and the hush deepened when the tall powerful form of the German leader was seen stalking toward the deserted house and entering it through a door, which Gian Vitelozzo had forced, the obstacle which had luckily prevented him from reaching before his unsuspecting victim. The ruffian could be seen from below, holding in his arms on the balcony the shrieking and struggling girl, disregarding in his brutal eagerness all that passed below. Suddenly his shoulder was grasped as in the teeth of a lion, and so powerful was the pressure that the noble's arms were benumbed and dropped powerlessly by his side. Before he recovered from his surprise and could make one single effort at resistance, Eckhardt had seized him round the waist and hurled him down on the square amidst a roaring thunder of applause mingled with howls of derision and rage. Those immediately beneath the balcony, consisting chiefly of the scum and rabble, who cared little for the monk's arguments, rejoiced at the prompt retribution meted out to one of their oppressors, though the discomfiture of the hapless victim had left them utterly indifferent. Why should they carry their skin to market to right another's wrong?

Thus they offered neither obstacle nor assistance when the Roman baron, in no wise hurt by his fall, as the balcony was at no great height from the ground, rose in a towering rage and challenged his assailant to descend and to meet him in mortal combat. But by this time the disturbance had reached the monk's ears, and at once perceiving the cause from his lofty point of vantage, Gerbert shouted to his audience to secure the brawler in the name of God and the Church. The mob obeyed, though swayed by reluctance and doubts, while the pontifical guards closed round the offending noble to cut off his escape. But Gian Vitelozzo seemed to possess sovereign reasons for dreading to find himself in the custody of the Vicar of the Church and promptly took to flight.

Overthrowing the first who opposed him, the rest offering no serious resistance, he forced his way to one of the narrow passages of the Ghetto, fled through it, relinquishing his accoutrements and vanished in the shadows, which haunted this dismal region by day and by night. But Gerbert of Aurillac was not to be so easily baffled. He had recognized the Roman baron despite his demeaning attire. With a voice of thunder he ordered his entire following to the ruffian's pursuit, and noting the direction in which Vitelozzo had disappeared, he leaped, despite his advanced years, from his pulpit and waving a cross high in the air, led the pursuit in person, which inaugurated a general stampede of nobles, Jews, pilgrims, monks and the ever-present rabble of Rome.

This unforeseen incident having drawn off the crowd, which had invaded the Ghetto, in the preacher's wake, the great square was quickly deserted and the torches in the high windows were extinguished as if a sudden wind-storm had snuffed out their glowing radiance.

CHAPTER X

THE SICILIAN DANCER

After a fruitless search for the hapless victim of the Roman baron's licentiousness, in order to restore her in safety to her kindred or friends, Eckhardt concluded at last that she had found a haven of security and turned his back upon the Ghetto and its panic-stricken inmates without bestowing another thought upon an incident, in itself not uncommon and but an evidence of the deep-rooted social disorder of the times. His thoughts reverted rather to the attempt upon the life of the pontifical delegate, which some happy chance had permitted him to frustrate, but in vain did he try to fathom the reasons prompting a deed, the accomplishment of which seemed to hold out such meagre promise of reward to its perpetrators, whose persons were enshrouded in a veil of mystery. Eckhardt could only assign personal reasons to an attempt, which, if successful, could not enrich the moving spirits of the plot, a consideration always uppermost in men's minds, and pondering thus over the strange events, the commander aimlessly pursued his way in a direction opposite to the one the monk and his following had chosen for the pursuit of the baron. How long he had thus strolled onward, he knew not, when he found himself in the space before the Capitol. The moon gleamed pale as an alabaster lamp in the dark azure of the heavens, trembling luminously on the waters of a fountain which flowed from beneath the Capitoline rock.

Here some scattered groups of the populace sat or lolled on the ground, discussing the events of the day, jesting, laughing or love-making. Others paraded up and down, engaged in conversation and enjoying the balmy night air, tinged with the breath of departing summer.

Wearied with thought, Eckhardt made his way to the fountain, and, seated on the margin regardless of the chattering groups which continually clustered round it and dispersed, he felt his spirits grow calm in the monotony of the gurgling flow of the water, which was streaming down the rock and spurting from several grotesque mouths of lions and dolphins. The stars sparkled over the dark, towering cypresses, which crowned the surrounding eminences, and the palaces and ruins upon them stood forth in distinctness of splendour or desolation against the luminous brightness of the moonlit sky.

Eckhardt's ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a tambourine, and looking up from his reverie, he perceived that the populace were gathering in a wide circle before the fountain, attracted by the sound of the instrument. In the background, kept thus remote by the vigilance of an old woman and two half-savage Calabrians, who seemed to be the proprietors of the show, stood a young woman in the garb of a Sicilian, apparently just preparing to dance. She seemed to belong to a class of damsels who were ordained under severe penalties to go masked during all religious festivals, to protect the pilgrims from the influence of their baleful charms. Else there could be no reason why an itinerant female juggler or minstrel who employed the talents, which the harmonious climate of Italy lavishes on its poorest children, to enable them to earn a scant living from the rude populace, should affect the modesty or precaution of a mask. But her tall, voluptuous form as she stood collecting her audience with the ringing chimes of her tambourine, garbed as she was in that graceful Sicilian costume, which still retains the elegance of its Greek original, proved allurement enough despite her mask. While thus unconsciously diverting his disturbed fancies, Eckhardt became aware, that he had himself attracted the notice of the dancer, for he encountered her gaze beaming on him from the depths of her green-speckled mask, which its ordainer had intended to represent the corruption of disease, but which the humour of the populace had transmuted into a more pleasant association, by calling them, "Cardinal melons."

The dancer started from her somewhat listless attitude into one of gayety and animation, when she saw how earnestly the dark stranger scrutinized her, and tripping across the intervening space, she paused before him and said in a voice whose music flowed to his heart in its mingled humility and tenderness:

"Sainted Stranger! Will you disdain dancing the Tarantella with a poor Sicilian sinner for the love of Santa Rosalia?"

"Thou art like to make many for the love of thyself," replied Eckhardt. "But it were little seemly to behold a sinner in my weeds join in the dance with one in thine."

As he spoke, he peered so intently into the masked visage of the Sicilian dancer, that she precipitately retreated.

"Nay – then I must use my spells," she replied after a moment's thought, and glancing round the circle, which was constantly increasing, she added slowly, "my spells to raise the dead, since love and passion are dead in your consecrated breast! Mother – my mandolin!"

The smile of her lips seemed to gleam even through her mask as she threw her tambourine by its silver chain over her shoulders, taking instead the instrument, which one of the Calabrians handed to her. Tuning her mandolin she again turned to Eckhardt.

"But first you must fairly answer a question, else I shall not know which of my spells to use: for with some memory alone avails, – with others hope."

And without waiting his reply, she began to sing in a voice of indescribable sweetness. After the second stanza she paused, apparently to await the reply to her question, while a murmur of delight ran through the ranks of her listeners. The first sound of her voice had fixed Eckhardt's attention, not alone for its exquisite purity and sweetness, but the strange, mysterious air which hovered round her, despite her demeaning attire.

Yet his reply partook of the asperity of his Northern forests.

"Deem you such gossamer subtleties were likely to find anchorage in this restless breast, which, you hear, I strike and it answers with the sound of steel?"

"Nay, then so much the worse for you," replied the dancer. "For where the pure spirit comes not, – the dark one will," and she continued her song in a voice of still more mellow and alluring sweetness.

Suddenly she approached him again, her air more mysterious than ever.

"Ah!" she whispered. "And I could teach you even a sweeter lesson, – but you men will never learn it, as long as women have been trying to teach it on earth."

"Wherefore then wear you this mask?" questioned Eckhardt with a severity in his tone, which seemed to stagger the girl.

"To please one greater than myself," the dancer replied with a mock bow, which produced a general outburst of laughter.

"Well then, – what do you want with me? Why do you shrink away?"

"Nay, – if you will not dance with me, I must look for another partner, for my mother grows impatient, as you may see by the twirling of her girdle," replied the girl pettishly. "I never cared who it was before, – and now simply because I like you, you hate me."

"You know it is the bite of the poison spider, for which the Tarantella is the antidote," spoke Eckhardt sternly.

Without replying the girl began her dance anew, flitting before her indifferent spectator in a maze of serpentine movements, at once alluring and bewildering to the eye. And to complete her mockery of his apathy, she continued to sing even during all the vagaries of her dance.

The crowd looked on with constantly increasing delight testifying its enthusiasm with occasional outbursts of joyful acclamation. Showers of silver, even gold, which fell in the circle, showed that the motley audience had not exhausted its resources in pious contributions, and the coins were greedily gathered in by the old woman and her comrades, while several nobles who had joined the concourse whispered to the hag, gave her rings and other rich pledges, all of which she accepted, repaying the donors with the less substantial coin of promise.

Suddenly the relentless fair one concluded her mazy circles by forming one with her nude arms over Eckhardt's head and inclining herself towards him, she whispered a few words into his ear. A lightning change seemed to come over the commander's countenance, intensifying its pallor, and struck with the impression she had produced, the Sicilian continued her importunities, nodding towards the old hag in the background, until Eckhardt half reluctantly, half wrathfully permitted himself to be drawn towards the group, of which the old woman formed the center. Pausing before her and whispering a few words into her ear, which caused the hag to glance up with a scowling leer, the girl took a small bronze mirror of oval shape from beneath her tunic and after breathing upon the surface, requested the old woman to proceed with the spell. The two Calabrians hurriedly gathered some dried leaves, which they stuffed under a tripod, that seemed to constitute the entire stock-in-trade of the group. After placing thereon a copper brazier, on which the old woman scattered some spices, the latter commanded the girl to hold the mirror over the fumes, which began to rise, after the two Calabrians had set the leaves on fire. The flames, which greedily licked them up, cast a strange illumination over the scene. The crowds attracted by the uncommon spectacle pushed nearer and nearer, while Eckhardt watched the process with an air of ill-disguised impatience and annoyance leaning upon his huge brand.

The old woman was mumbling some words in a strange unintelligible jargon and the Calabrians were replenishing the consumed leaves with a new supply they had gathered up, when Eckhardt's strange companion drawing closer, whispered to him:

"Now your wish! Think it – but do not speak!"

Eckhardt nodded, half indifferently, half irritated, when the girl suddenly held the bronze mirror before his eyes and bade him look. But no sooner had he obeyed her behest, than with an outcry of amazement he darted forward and fairly captured his unsuspecting tormentor.

"Who are you?" he questioned breathlessly, "to read men's thoughts and the silent wish of their heart?"

But in his eagerness he probably hurt the girl against the iron scales, of whose jangling he had boasted, for she uttered a cry and called in great terror: "Rescue – Rescue!"

Before the words were well uttered the two Calabrians rushed towards them with drawn daggers. The mob also raised a shout and seemed to meditate interference. This uproar changed the nature of the dancer's alarm.

"In our Holy Mother's name – forbear – " she addressed the two Calabrians, and the mob, and turning to her captor, she muttered in a tone of almost abject entreaty:

"Release me – noble stranger! Indeed I am not what I seem, and to be recognized here would be my ruin. Nay – look not so incredulous! I have but played this trick on you, to learn if you indeed hated all woman-kind. You think me beautiful, – ah! Could you but see my mistress! You would surely forget these poor charms of mine."

"And who is your mistress?" questioned Eckhardt persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask, and still under the spell of the strange and to him inexplicable vision in the bronze mirror.

"Mercy – mercy! You know it is a grievous offence to be seen without my Cardinal melon," pleaded the girl with a return of the wiling witchery in her tones and attempting, but in vain, to release herself from Eckhardt's determined grasp.

"Who is your mistress?" insisted the Margrave. "And who are you?"

"Release the wanton! How dare you, a soldier of the church, break the commands of the Apostolic lieutenant?" exclaimed a husky voice and a strong arm grasped Eckhardt's shoulder. Turning round, the latter saw himself confronted by the towering form of the monk Nilus, who seemed ignorant of the person and rank of him he was addressing and whose countenance flamed with fanatic wrath.

"Ay! And it hath come to my turn to rescue damsels, and moreover to serve the church," added another speaker in a bantering tone and Eckhardt instantly recognized the Lord Vitelozzo, who having eluded the pursuit of the monk of Cluny, held a mace he had secured in lieu of his cross-bow high and menacingly in the air.

"Friar, look to your ally, if such he be, lest I do what I should have done before and make a very harmless rogue of him," said Eckhardt, holding the girl with one hand while with the other he unsheathed his sword.

"Peace, fool!" the monk addressed his would-be ally, drawing him back forcibly. "The church needs not the aid of one rogue to subdue another. Let the girl go, my son!" he then turned to the Margrave.

"Nay, father – by these bruises, which still ache, I will retrieve my wrong and rescue the wench," insisted the Roman, again raising his massive weapon, but the monk and some bystanders wedged themselves between Eckhardt and his opponent.

"Nay, then, now we are like to have good sport," exclaimed a fourth. "A monk, a woman and a soldier, – it requires not more to set the world ablaze."

"Stranger, – I implore you, release me," whispered Eckhardt's captive with frantic entreaty amidst the ever increasing tumult of the bystanders, who appeared to be divided, some favouring the monk, while others sided with the girl's captor, whose intentions they sorely misconstrued. "I would not stand revealed to yonder monk for all the world!" concluded the girl in fear-struck tones.

At this moment a cry among the bystanders warned Eckhardt that Vitelozzo's wrath had at length mastered every effort to restrain him, and, whirling round, to defend himself he was compelled to release the girl. But instead of making the use she might have been expected to do of her liberty, she called to the monk, to part the combatants in the name of the saints.

But it required no expostulation on the part of the friar, for when Eckhardt turned fully upon him, Vitelozzo, for the first time recognizing his antagonist, beat a precipitate retreat, but at some distance he turned, shouting derisively:

"An olive for a fig! Your dove has flown!" and when Eckhardt, recovering from his surprise, wheeled about, he found, much to his chagrin, the Roman's words confirmed by the absence of the girl as well as of her associates, who managed to make their escape at the moment when the impending encounter had momentarily drawn off the attention of the crowd.

"The devil can speak truth, they say, though I believed it not till now," muttered Eckhardt to himself as, vexed and mystified beyond measure, he strode through the scattering crowds.

Had it been some jeer of the fiend? Had he been made the victim of some monstrous deceit?

Who was the Sicilian dancer, whose manners and golden language belied her demeaning attire, whose strange eyes had penetrated into the darkness of his soul, whose voice had thrilled him with the echoes of one long silent and forever?

The magic mirror in which, as in a haze, he had seen the one face he most longed to see, – the strange and sudden fulfillment of the unspoken wish of his heart, – the dancer's marked persistence in the face of his declared abhorrence, – her mask and her incongruous companions, – her fear of the monk and concern for himself, – all these incidents, which one by one floated on the mirror of his memory, rose ever and anon before his inner gaze – each time more mystifying and bewildering.

In deep rumination Eckhardt pursued his way, gazing absently upon the roofless columns and shattered walls, everywhere visible, over which the star-light shone – ghostly and transparent, backed by the frowning and embattled fortresses of the Cavalli, half hidden by the dark foliage that sprang up amidst the very fanes and palaces of old. Now and then he paused with a deep and heavy sigh, as he pondered over the dark and desolate path upon which he was about to enter, over the lack of a guiding hand in which he might trust, over the uncertainty of the step, which, once taken was beyond recall.

Suddenly a light caught the solitary rambler's eye, a light almost like a star, scarcely larger indeed, but more red and intense in its ray. Of itself it was nothing uncommon and might have shone from either convent or cottage. But it streamed from a part of the Aventine, which contained no habitations of the living, only deserted ruins and shattered porticoes of which even the names and memories of their former inhabitants had been long forgotten. Aware of this, Eckhardt felt a slight awe, as the light threw its unsteady beam over the dreary landscape; for he was by no means free from the superstition of the age and it was near the hour consecrated to witches and ghosts.

But fear, whether of this world or the next, could not long daunt the mind of the Margrave; and after a brief hesitation he resolved to make a digression from his way, to discover the cause of the phenomenon. Unconsciously Eckhardt's tread passed over the site of the ill-famed temple of Isis which had at one time witnessed those wildest of orgies commemorated by the pen of Juvenal. At last he came to a dense and dark copse from an opening in the center of which gleamed the mysterious light. Penetrating the gloomy foliage Eckhardt found himself before a large ruin, grey and roofless. Through a rift in the wall, forming a kind of casement and about ten feet from the ground, the light gleamed over the matted and rank soil, embedded, as it were, in vast masses of shade. Without knowing it, Eckhardt stood on the very spot once consecrated to the cult of the Egyptian goddess, and now shunned as an abode of evil spirits. The walls of the ruin were covered with a dense growth of creepers, which entwined even the crumbled portico to an extent that made it almost impossible to penetrate into its intricate labyrinth of corridors.

While indulging in a thousand speculations, occasioned by the hour and the spot, Eckhardt suddenly perceived a shadow in the portico. Only the head was visible in the moonlight, which bathed the ruin, and it disappeared almost as quickly as it had been revealed. While meditating upon the expediency of exploring the mystery which confronted him, Eckhardt was startled by the sound of footsteps. Straining his gaze through the haze of the moonlight he beheld emerging from the portico of the temple the tall form of a man, wrapt in a long black cloak. He wore a conical hat with sloping brim which entirely shadowed his face and on his right arm he carried the apparently lifeless body of a girl. With the object of preventing a probable crime Eckhardt stepped from his place of concealment just as the stranger was about to pass him with his mysterious burden and placed his hands arrestingly on the other's shoulder.

"Who are you? And what is your business here?" he questioned curtly, attempting to remove the stranger's vizor.

"The one matters little to your business, – the other little to mine," the tall individual replied enigmatically while he dexterously resisted his questioner's effort to gain a glimpse at his face. "But," he added in a strange oracular tone, which moved Eckhardt despite himself, "if you value my aid in your hour of trial – assist me now in my hour of need!"

"Your aid?" echoed Eckhardt, staring amazed at his companion. "Do you know me? In what can you assist me?"

"You are Eckhardt the Margrave," replied the stranger; then inclining his head slightly towards him he whispered a word, the effect of which seemed to paralyze his listener, for his arresting hand fell and he retreated a step or two, surveying him in speechless wonder.

"Who are you?" he stammered at last.

The stranger raised the long visor of his conical hat. An exclamation of surprise came from Eckhardt's lips.

"Hezilo, the harper!"

The other replied with a silent nod.

"And we have never met!"

"I seldom go out!" said the harper.

"What know you of Ginevra?" begged the Margrave.

The harper shook his head.

"This is neither the time, nor the place. I must be gone – to shelter my burden! We shall meet again! If you follow me," he concluded, noting Eckhardt's persistence, "you will learn nothing and only endanger my safety and that of this child!"

"Is she dead?" Eckhardt questioned with a shudder.

"Would she were!" replied the stranger mournfully.

"Can I assist you?"

"I thank you! The burden is light. We will meet again."

There was something in the harper's tone which arrested Eckhardt's desire to ignore his injunction. How long he remained on the site of the ill-famed ruin, the Margrave hardly knew. When the fresh breeze of night, blowing from the Campagna, roused him at last from his reverie the mysterious stranger and his equally mysterious burden had disappeared in the haze of the moonlit night. Like one walking in a dream Eckhardt slowly retraced his steps to his palace on the Caelian Mount, where an imperial order sanctioning his purpose and relieving him of his command awaited him.